Californian Vermicomposters

Comment by Stephen Sibley on February 27, 2009 at 2:28pm

Welcome All!

This is a new group formed for Vermicomposters from California and/or surrounding areas to exchanges questions, ideas, and helpful hints to fellow vermicomposters in similar climate and geographical conditions!

Please feel free to join and start commenting right away!

Comment by Duane on March 6, 2009 at 3:16pm

Just signed up for the group! I'm in the So. Ca. area.

Comment by Dan Ence on April 1, 2009 at 9:57pm

I live in a small town north of Sacramento called Sutter. Right by the foots of the Buttes.

Comment by Steven Chow on April 1, 2009 at 10:24pm

I'm in the SF bay area (Oakland actually).

Comment by Stephen Sibley on April 16, 2009 at 5:08pm

Hey guys sorry this hasn't been the most active topic, I am from Fair Oaks/Citrus Heights area in Sacramento. Nice to meet you all! What size worm farms do you have going? (what bins and how many worms?) And, how long have you been vermicomposting for?

Comment by Phil Burdine on April 18, 2009 at 8:17am

I'm from Oroville, CA. I have a commercial worm farm called WormWorks. I presently have 6 windrows x 150 ft. I wholesale my products to The Worm Farm in Durham, CA. I have been in business 2 1/2 years.

Comment by Beth & Dave on April 29, 2009 at 8:10am

Hi Everyone. We're from Antioch, CA. Our worm farm is called Monster Worms. We love this business. We enjoy seeing all of the vegetable scraps and manure that we collect from local merchants turn into beautiful castings!!

Comment by Stephen Sibley on April 29, 2009 at 12:40pm

Sent to some individuals, but for all who may have advice:

Assuming favorable conditions; how often would you say approx 8 lbs of worms in 2 bath tubs would need to be sifted for the castings? And, approx how much castings would that 8lbs of worms produce in a given period (i.e. 1 month or 3 months). I feed them regularly (every 2-3 days) kitchen scraps, leaves, lots of shredded paper, and recently added a worm fattening recipe for additional assurance of healthy/happy worms!

I also have a few plastic tubs of worms that I believe needs to be sifted, (is full) but dont know if its too soon, if the things remaining are actually castings, or maybe just things that have decomposed a bit, along with manure and coffee grounds that look like soil....whats the easiest way to tell if a bin is done, and if the things you are looking at are in fact castings?

Comment by Beth & Dave on April 29, 2009 at 7:07pm

Hi Steve,
You have a lot of unanswered variables. What is the square footage of the bathtubs? What type of worms do you have? Are you putting 4 lbs. into each tub or 8 lbs. into one tub? A good rule of thumb is to put in one lb. of worms for every square foot. You may want to consider putting all 8 lbs. or more into one bathtub.

We recently started working with African Nightcrawlers and we LOVE them. They are fantastic composters and almost as good as the Europeans when it comes to putting out cocoons. We got our Africans on March 18. On April 22, we removed 30 lbs. of castings from 10 lbs. of worms!! That's five weeks!

Worms can always find more to eat in castings, but when it looks brown/black and crumbly or like coffee grounds, then it's ready.

When you are working with containers, probably the easiest method to separate the worms from the castings is to feed them on one side only. Move all of your worms, castings and old bedding to one side and essentially start a new bed on the other. Most of the worms will migrate over to the new side after a few days. You can then pull out the castings and old bedding. We check for cocoons and babies while we are doing this. Hope this helps.
Beth & Dave

Comment by Duane on May 1, 2009 at 10:23am

Hi Beth & Dave,
Have you tried to combine the different worms together and if so, how was the outcome? Or is better to keep them separate?
Duane

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